On the stress recovery behaviour of Ecoflex silicone rubbers

Silicone rubbers are promising materials that have extensively been used in many areas, including wearable electronic devices, actuator materials in soft robotics, and energy harvesters. Ecoflex, a commercially available polymer, is a group of silicone rubbers appearing with various Shore hardnesses that has become popular in recent years. While silicone rubbers in their real applications are subjected to repeated loading-unloading conditions, their mechanical behaviour under cyclic loading in different deformation modes and the corresponding stress recovery behaviour are yet to be well investigated. In this contribution, we conduct loading-unloading cyclic experiments in different time gaps between the first cycle and the second cycle to demonstrate the stress recovery behaviour after stress softening happens during the first cycle. For that, three different modes of deformations, i.e., uniaxial tension, planar tension, and equibiaxial tension tests are selected. Besides, Shore hardness dependence with different strain levels is also taken into consideration. The results show that the stress softening could recover significantly with time. These findings will help to understand the mechanical behaviour of Ecoflex silicone rubbers before selecting them in practical applications that are exposed to repeated loading-unloading cycles.